I did see a preying mantis trying to maneuver among my plants some days ago, I was fascinated by the way it was moving, throwing out one front leg at the time, seemingly without being able to see anything, but trying to find someting to hold on to, then repeting these movements.
We rarely see dragonflies here, but I actually saw two a few days ago, before the heavy rain started. I have actually only seen them once before, that was several years ago, and it was in the middle of the summer, when they suddenly arrived in an enormous swarm, thousand of them hit the southern wall of our house and covered it completely, it was almost as if we had been hit by one of the plagues of Egypt. They stayed there for some hours, then suddely lifted and flew off straight north. I asked aound here, nobody had any idea what dragonflies were and they had never seen them before.
